


Doubt thou the stars are fire

by Shipper_on_deck



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Angst, Falsettos - Freeform, M/M, Shakespeare, Stars, basically Marvin loves shakespeare and Whizzer loves the stars, im not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 08:57:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14733938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shipper_on_deck/pseuds/Shipper_on_deck
Summary: Whizzer adores the stars, and finds himself more in them than in anything on earthMarvin adores old, Shakespearean classics and finds himself more in pages of ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ than anything on earth





	Doubt thou the stars are fire

From being just ten, Whizzer had adored the stars. He’d sit for hours on his bedroom floor, mapping out where the constellations lie in the night sky, learning the difference between each type of star, and adoring them all. His mother had always called him a star, and oh, how he wished she was right. He wanted to be a star, in his ten year old mind, it meant shining out, untouchable and glittering. Adored. But, he supposed, if he couldn’t become a star, he could go among them, and so like thousands of children before and after him, Whizzer dreamed of becoming a spaceman.

At fifteen, Marvin had stumbled into his first real lesson in English Literature, which meant that while the rest of his class sat bored, distracted and drawing instead of taking notes, he sat enthralled by the older works, especially when his teacher announced they’d be studying the works of Shakespeare. He was in love with the stories, and was often the one that knew the most of the play by heart within the week. That year, he knew for certain he wanted to be an English teacher... wanted to pass on what his teacher had made so fascinating to him.

At 20, Whizzer had given up trying to find work in his hometown, and had decided to give in to a small wish he’d harboured for years; he moved to New York. He didn’t live with much. His apartment was tiny, and in a rough area, so he didn’t bother with anything valuable beyond his camera, which he protected like his child. The appartment itself was damp and dark, with most of the lights not working, and so on the nights he sat alone, unable to sleep, he found himself resorting to his old childhood method to doze off. He gazed out of his bedroom window and scanned the sky for any stars he could catch sight of, trying to remember the name, or a constellation it was in. It helped.

At 25, Marvin realised just how badly suited for his job he was. He still held a passion for the old works, something he’d kept close throughout his life, but he’d forgotten just how little even his own classmates had cared when it had been their days. He didn’t have the patience to be interesting to most of the class, and so he realised suddenly that his life was nowhere near what he’d dreamt for himself... sitting alone at a gay bar, pretending he was there for any reason other than to go home with someone, anyone, just so he didn’t have to face his wife and son. At 25 though, his eyes lock across the bar with a man far younger than him, and for a moment something sparks between them, like stardust burning a connection into the air, or like a half remembered quote, falling from someone’s lips. It depended which of them you asked. Either way, Marvin had swallowed the last of his denial and walked over, setting them both up, without either knowing it, to implode, with his first four words to the man he would one day call his soulmate. “So, what’s your name?”

At 30, Whizzer realised his childhood belief that he was, or at least could be a star, had only partly changed. It wasn’t now because he shined particularly brightly, or because he stood out in a sea of those like him, no. Now, it was because he was destructive, unstable, addicted to something, anything, that let him forget for a while. Forget that he had fallen in love with someone who didn’t seem to really care about him at all. He’d been the catalyst in a destroyed marriage, and the fallout afterwards had left him and Marvin, a man he thought he could trust, alone in his apartment. He supposed that if he could personify his old, childhood interests as he did, Marvin did too, in a way. He was outdated at times, sharp and wrong to someone that didn’t immediately understand. Their relationship had been a Frankenstein’s monster of a thing, stitches made of commet trails and string once used for binding books, holding together whispered lies of ‘I love you’ that didn’t cover the truth underneath. They didn’t work, not like this. Whizzer wasn’t surprised when he found himself lying alone again in his rundown apartment in New York, alone. Aged 30.

By age 35, Marvin supposed their relationship was different. If they had once been a monster, now they were the aftermath of a cosmic implosion. They were scattered stardust ready to be something better, and for a while they were. Marvin listened as Whizzer talked for hours about the constellations and the planets, and found that what once had been boredom was now intrigue as he listened to his lover explain, with an almost childlike excitement, the difference between a red and white dwarf. Even Whizzer admitted quietly that he knew things had changed. Where once Marvin’s constant quotes of plays he’d never read had irritated him at best, now it made him smile, and many quotes changed from harsh and cruel, insults designed to make him feel insignificant, unintelligent, to post-it notes stuck on the bathroom window before Marvin left for work, a few small words to remind Whizzer that this time, Marvin wasn’t childish enough to let him go. 

Whizzer didn’t live long enough to see himself become 40. At age 36, he passed away in hospital, terrified, but never alone. His death wasn’t an implosion that caused a black hole, not to himself at least (Marvin would disagree), but rather the soft flicker from earth as a star died, ultimately quiet, missed only by those who knew it well enough to recognise it. His last day, unknown to them both, had been all Whizzer had wanted it to be. They lay, silently in he hospital bed, when Whizzer knew it was the end. Marvin begged him to talk about the stars, ignoring the fact that he knew this was the end too, and whizzer had complied. Maybe slower, maybe stumbling a little more often as he struggled through his own exhaustion, but he told the man he loved, one last time, about the world that fascinated him. In the end, his last words to Marvin were whispered, and yet too loud in the silent room. “D-doubt thou t-the s-stars are f...fire... Doubt t-thou that the s-sun doth move” a half remembered quote his lover had once told him, and though he tripped and stumbled over the words once or twice, Marvin had listened, and held him close as they both cried, until Whizzer’s heart monitor flatlined, inevitably before he finished the quote, and Marvin was left alone. His brightest star fizzling our within his arms as he whispered the other half. “Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.”

Marvin didn’t live to see himself become 45. At 43, what had pulled his lover to the cosmos came back for him, and it wasn’t terrifying, it wasn’t suffocating or hard to bare. At aged 43, with midnight striking as his birthday ended, Marvin slipped away into the stars, finding once again his lover, who’d always shone like them.


End file.
